[[My Notes]] are cool[^1], but this technique isn't the best for a business setting. The notes are too person-specific. They require too much reading. **They are more of a tool for thinking than a tool for explaining**. Enter Microsoft PowerPoint. PowerPoint is the bane of the businessperson's existence. Some of the worst, most mind-numbing moments of my life have been spent being presented at via PowerPoint. There's nothing inherently wrong with PowerPoint, it's just that PowerPoint, like [[Excel]] is approachable enough for a layperson to use badly - without realizing they're bad at it. In my personal life I've committed to [[Aaron's Select File Types|a few durable file types]], and presentations are *not* in there... but this isn't a technique for my personal life. It's for business. ## Slides as Notes You can treat slides like [[Evergreen Notes|evergreen]] [[Atomic Notes]]. Each slide is self-contained, and only so long. Treating slides like a [[Slip-Box Method|slip-box notetaking system]] makes each slide stand on its own, which means the order of the presentation no longer really matters. PowerPoint allows for *internal* linking between slides & sections quite easily. Moreover, those internal links still work when the PowerPoint is exported to [[PDF]]. This makes slides almost act like a [[Wiki]]. ![[PowerPoint as a Knowledge Base 2026-01-23 12.44.15.excalidraw.svg]] %%[[PowerPoint as a Knowledge Base 2026-01-23 12.44.15.excalidraw.md|🖋 Edit in Excalidraw]]%% ### Benefits - One slide cannot hold much, so the topic is forced to be [[~7 - The Limit of Simultaneous Info|small enough to comprehend]] - You maximize [[DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself)|re-use]] and enable [[Intermediate Packets]] - You have a place to put new things you know you'll need references to - By crafting slides aimed at others, **it forces you to articulate realities that you may have otherwise not realized you didn't know well enough to explain** ### Drawbacks - One slide cannot hold much, even if the content really would benefit from it. - The slide deck will get large in terms of number of files & file size. - There's limited ability to promote or hide slides that are "ready to go" or "very drafty". - Whether or not slide order matters, there is an order. Most people will expect the order to make sense. - Versioning can be troubling. If you edit a slide in one of the specific, for-purpose decks, those edits might not make it back to the main body of slides. In many cases you may not *want* them to make it back to the body of slides, which then creates [[Similar-but-Different]] copies - Individual slides don't have their own lifecycle. Unless you're manually labeling them with an 'as of' date, there's no way to really capture "this information is accurate as of" **** # More ## Source - Myself [^1]: citation needed